Sex offender arraigned in 25-year-old sex assault

Updated 7:48 am, Tuesday, December 24, 2013

Osvaldo Muniz, 66, has been charged with first-degree kidnapping and first-degree aggravated sexual assault in connection with an August 1988 attack on a 19-year-old woman on Wolfpit Avenue.

Osvaldo Muniz, 66, has been charged with first-degree kidnapping and first-degree aggravated sexual assault in connection with an August 1988 attack on a 19-year-old woman on Wolfpit Avenue.

Photo: Norwalk Police Department

Sex offender arraigned in 25-year-old sex assault

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STAMFORD -- A convicted sex offender from Bridgeport was arraigned at the Stamford courthouse Monday in connection with a 25-year-old knife-point rape and kidnap case that authorities said he was linked to with DNA testing.

Osvaldo Muniz, 63, of 1102 East Main St., was arraigned on charges of first-degree kidnapping and first-degree sexual assault, and was held in lieu of $500,000 bond. At his short appearance at the Stamford courthouse Monday, Muniz, who needed a cane to walk into the courtroom, was assigned public defender Howard Ehring as his attorney.

Muniz was arraigned for the first time on the Part A docket in Stamford, where the most serious crimes in the area are adjudicated. He was arrested by the Norwalk police cold case unit on Dec. 6 and has been held in jail since his arrest.

On Aug. 4, 1988, around 5:30 a.m. a woman reported to police that she had been dragged out of her friend's Wolfpit Avenue apartment with a butcher knife to her throat and raped by an unknown man, Muniz's seven-page arrest affidavit says.

The woman told police the man held his hand over her mouth, dragged her to a nearby yard and assaulted her with a knife in his hand. The woman said she was too afraid to scream and thought she would be killed by the rapist and did not move until about 10 minutes after he fled. She rang door bell after door bell until a resident answered and called police that morning. A drawing of the man was developed and released by police, but the woman could not identify any of the suspects developed in the case as her attacker and the rape went unsolved, the affidavit said. In 2011, Lt. Art Weisgerber began a reorganization of the Norwalk police department's cold case files and identified the August 1988 case as one that might be solved with modern DNA analysis.

The evidence from the case was re-examined by the state Forensic Science Laboratory in an effort to develop a DNA profile for the rapist, whose sperm and underwear were in evidence. In October, Weisgerber was notified the lab matched the evidence to the former convict.

According to his criminal record, Muniz has 37 criminal convictions and in 1980 was convicted of first-degree sexual assault. Six days after the sexual assault in Norwalk, he was charged and convicted of third-degree assault in Norwalk. On Aug. 22 of the same year he was charged and convicted for unlawful restraint and third-degree assault in Bridgeport.

In Feb. 1999, a DNA swab was taken from Muniz by the department of corrections, who also provided Norwalk police with his prison record showing he was out at the time of the rape.

Police then obtained a warrant to take a current swab of Muniz's DNA to confirm the lab results and scientists in early December determined that his DNA was a 1 to 7 billion match to the sperm found in evidence, the affidavit said.

Muniz, who has not yet made a plea in the case, is scheduled to return to court Jan. 6.